


Sailing On Another Board

by black_lodge



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:18:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_lodge/pseuds/black_lodge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We said our ‘til-death-do-us-parts, Admiral. Death parted us. I don’t expect to see him again until some snotty blue-coat runs me through and sends me on my way." A smile, almost a wink. "I’m not worried, though, Admiral, nor should you be. He takes excellent care of the dead." Originally posted on LJ June 2007. Post-AWE AU because I wouldn't give up Norrington without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sailing On Another Board

1.

After three unsuccessful weeks out at sea, the Queen’s ship the Swann met the pirate ship Prodigal on open seas. The quartermaster gave the order to attack, but unexpectedly the Prodigal ran up a white flag. The admiral ordered a cessation of hostilities and prepared to board for negotiations.

The quartermaster was not entirely in favor of this plan.

"Sir, what if it’s a trick? Worse, they might have the plague aboard. The Prodigal has never surrendered in a fight."

"There’s no plague aboard, Master Stott," said the admiral briskly, handing the quartermaster the spyglass. "See, their men are all topside, running like rats from the dog."

Like plagued rats, thought the quartermaster, but simply handed back the spyglass. "Very well, sir." And he began shouting the orders to bring the ships together.

"Spare the guns, Master Stott," the admiral said when they were board and board, rails lashed together. The quartermaster looked at him, aghast.

"But sir!" Common practice when boarding a pirate ship demanded the decks be cleared by granadoes and fire-pots before entry was even attempted.

But the admiral was adamant. "I will not cripple a surrendering ship! We will do this as peacefully as possible. Should they attack, we give them no quarter. But I will not disregard a white flag." And with that, he took the armed boarding party and prepared to embark.

The Swann was a magnificent ship, a sixty-gunner – powerful, but a cumbersome match for the Prodigal. The pirate ship, though humble in appearance, used its smallness to its advantage. Being so much shorter than the Swann, the Prodigal forced its captors to board at the poop, the highest part of the ship, from their own focsle. The quartermaster saw this and quaked, but the determined admiral forced his way onto the deck.

As the quartermaster had feared, not two minutes had passed before the pirates turned on the boarding party. They cut the ropes that lashed the two ships together, quickly cut sail, and just moments later the Prodigal broke free of the Swann, gliding swiftly out over the open sea. The quartermaster nearly lost his head in the mad rush to follow, and by the time they had turned the massive Swann in an about-face, the Prodigal was already distant on the horizon.

 

The Prodigal’s crew dispatched the boarding party without much trouble, sending four to the locker and the nineteen others to the hold. The admiral was man-handled to the captain’s quarters, stripped of his sword and guns and bleeding from a split lip he’d acquired in the battle. Now he stood near the grand table in the middle of the spacious, empty room and waited, aware of the guards outside the door, mouth full with the warm tang of blood, stomach roiling at the taste of defeat. How could he ever could have allowed himself to fall for such a ploy? Worst of all, four men had died on his account. If he survived, what would he tell their families? What penance would absolve this offense?  
He wondered how much he would have to pay to get out of this mess.

He had never tangled with the Prodigal before, but he’d known men who had. They said she was a fierce fighter despite her few guns, that her men little tolerated the Brethren code and showed no mercy in battle. From looking around the captain’s quarters he could see they were a successful lot. The furniture was all made of the finest mahogany, ornately carved in the Asian tradition; the rug beneath his feet had most certainly been woven in India or Siam; and the various curios around the room had come from equally exotic places. One item in particular caught his attention: a large wooden elephant with a golden hide and tusks of carved ivory crouched on the floor like a guard-dog. The numerous gold and ivory candelabras were unlit, and the watery light from the ship’s rear windows served to brighten only a portion of the room, while the rest fell into easy darkness. In the gloom the elephant seemed to watch him with ruby eyes.

When the door behind him banged open, he jumped. His eyes strained, but the light did not permit him an adequate assessment of the figure who entered; the footsteps crossed the room to the strong-latticed windows, and as the light touched on the leonine hair that streamed over the figure’s shoulders, the admiral suppressed a gasp.

The window framed her, illuminated her shabby black and gold brocade overcoat, touched her bared, regal head with a corona of light. At her waist were belted her weapons, pistols and sword of the finest craftsmanship – he could tell even at this distance. Her hand rested gracefully on the head of the golden elephant, and her mouth smiled at him. He found it difficult to avert his gaze.

"Elizabeth," he said.

"Admiral Norrington," she acknowledged, still smiling that inscrutable smile. Her eyes were like dried figs, black and hard and foreign. "A pleasant surprise indeed."

He hadn’t seen her since the night he had freed her and the men from Singapore from Jones’ brig. He had escaped with her, but they had decided that Shipwreck Cove was the last place a bluecoat would want to be seen, and she dropped him off at a populated island where he would be able to find easy passage back to Port Royal.

The shock of seeing her now made him forget himself. He stepped forward, but her hand leapt from the head of the elephant to the pommel of her sword, and he stopped mid-movement. Her smile twitched, and after a tense moment she came forward to him, stopping just a foot away to examine him.

Her eyes trailed over his blue and gold uniform, took in the gold braids and buttons and brocade, the black tricorn trimmed in white and gold, the bright cambric at his throat and his wrists. Impeccable but for powder burns on his hands and cuffs. She lifted her hands to his face, hesitated. When she gently touched his split lip she mistook his intake of breath for one of pain.

"I’m sorry," she said. "I’m afraid my men have eschewed manners for efficiency." She produced a handkerchief, surprisingly white in the gloom of the cabin. "Might as well make yourself comfortable. Better here than the hold, eh?"

"I would rather stay with my men."

She smirked at him. "No, you wouldn’t. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past five years, Admiral, it’s that comfort should be welcomed when offered. And it’s easy to mistake pride for selflessness." She turned to face the window, her silhouette black, and he almost missed her next words. "Funny, that."

Momentarily, she beckoned him to the table, indicated he should sit. He did reluctantly, manners still so ingrained that he balked at sitting while a woman stood.

From her place before the window, she glanced back at him with that smile. "I noticed the name of your ship, Admiral. Very flattering, but probably misguided. It was Turner for a while, you know."

"But no longer?"

"We said our ‘til-death-do-us-parts, Admiral. Death parted us. I don’t expect to see him again until some snotty blue-coat runs me through and sends me on my way." A smile, almost a wink. "I’m not worried, though, Admiral, nor should you be. He takes excellent care of the dead."

She moved across the room to a sideboard, which, when opened, revealed an impressive cache of alcohol. "Wine?"

He didn’t answer, but she poured him a glass anyway. She came up behind him then, and when her hand found his shoulder he might have sighed, but he wasn’t sure. He took the finely-cut crystal goblet from her, hoping she couldn’t see his fingers trembling.

She took her glass to the opposite side of the table, sat down and crossed her legs unabashedly. "You know," she said conversationally, tasting her drink, "that was a very stupid mistake, Admiral."

His chin snapped upwards as if she’d just delivered an uppercut to his jaw. He did not reply.

"Boarding at the poop. Surely you’ve read Seaman’s Grammar?"

"Of course I’ve read it." Controlled anger in his voice.

"Then you’d be familiar with this passage," she said, and began to quote: "’When two Ships lie together side by side… he that knoweth how to defend himself, and work well, will so run his ship, as to force you to enter upon his quarter, which is the highest part of the Ship, and only the Mizzen Shrouds to enter by, _from whence he may do you much hurt with little danger.’_ That’s straight from the book, Admiral, if I should indeed call you so, as you’ve little at your command at the moment."

"What do you want?"

"That’s ham-fisted of you. Please try the wine. Imported from France, you know."

"What do you want?" he asked again, nostrils flaring with anger. "You took us for a reason; you wouldn’t waste valuable supplies on us if you intended to simply murder us all. Therefore you must have plans for us. So what is it? Ransom? Pardon? You know the Crown’s attitude to piracy; they’d rather see me keel-hauled than give you quarter."

A sardonic smile crossed her face. "It seems we’re utterly at your mercy then, Admiral Norrington." She inclined her head in mock-deference to him.

"You never have forgiven me, have you," he said, and she blinked at him.

"Whatever do you mean?" She leaned forward, her golden head cocked to the side, mildly curious.

"For your father’s death," he said. "I swear to you I had nothing to do with –"

She cut him off. "I forgave you for that long ago," she said, humming with amusement. When she stood, though, he noted the tension in her shoulders, and the same in her voice when she spoke next. "What I cannot forgive you for is the summary slaughter of my Brethren."

His eyes followed her as she paced slowly across the cabin. The sunlight shone through her goblet, turning the wine inside into a jewel glowing from within. "You know it is my duty. You knew it when you chose this path, Elizabeth." More to himself than to his captor, he added, "Never did I think I’d cross you on high seas."

She stopped pacing to glare at him. "And had you known, what would you have done? Would you have gone on your way, ignored the Prodigal, let this scourge go on unchecked?"

Bewilderingly, she sounded furious at the idea. He gathered his wits enough to reply. "Of – of course not," he said. "I would’ve shown you justice, the same as to every other pirate." He forced out the last word, and her teeth flashed in the cabin’s darkness.

"I don’t think you would’ve," she said, moving around the table as she spoke. "See how my white flag crippled you. What did you think to gain by your leniency? Did you imagine that after this they would call you Norrington the Merciful, Norrington the Forgiving?" Her boot heels clapped against the floorboards, circling behind his chair. "It’s too late in your career to earn such generous monikers, Admiral. You might have been known as Norrington Who Gives No Quarter, but now you’ll have to be satisfied with Norrington the Lily-Livered, or even worse – " Her hand dropped to his shoulder, and her breath tickled his cheek – "Norrington the Short-Lived."

When her lips found his ear he jerked away, stifling a curse. She straightened, laughing a little. "Ever the gentleman, James."

She turned and walked away toward the door through which she had first entered. His hands shook with rage, dread, and not a little lust, and he clenched them into fists, trying to calm himself; but she did not yet leave. Her voice caught his attention once more, and he looked up at her, eyes dark with apprehension.

"Once you told me that our destinies had been entwined, but never joined," she said, regarding him through the murk. Beneath them the ship rolled. "Tell me, Admiral, are you familiar with the practice of splicing?"

She left then, before he could answer, and slammed the door behind her. Outside he could hear her giving orders to her men. In the dark of the cabin he clenched his fists until his palms ached.

 

2.

 

She did not come back that evening, and he gathered she’d taken the task of the second dogwatch and the first night watch. The sickening thought also occurred to him that she might have a lover, but he disregarded that notion almost as soon as it presented itself. A pirate ship was bound to have even less space for trysting than a ship of the Queen’s navy. Still, the idea nagged at the back of his mind, and he tried to divert his thoughts with designing a plan of escape.

When her men came in the morning to fetch him, he had nothing solid planned. The best he had come up was jumping out the windows into the sea which was a plan too obviously bad to even consider.

He hoped the pirates would take him to his men so he might talk with them, but they didn’t venture once belowdecks; instead they allowed him a turn about the quarterdeck, where he could plainly see the expanse of empty ocean surrounding them, clouds high and wispy on the underside of the sky, sun blazing like a Roman candle.  
High on the poop behind the wheel was Elizabeth, looking bright in the daylight. He watched her as he took the fresh air, saw her hand the wheel to the nearest man in order to study the navigational charts on the nearby table. Momentarily she glanced up, as if alerted by the weight of his gaze, and a lock of hair fluttered into her eyes, obscuring what might have been a wink.

The men at his sides took him back to the cabin.

 

She only interrupted the silence once that day, to fetch a navigational instrument from the cabinet. He had been drowsing in the chair, which he had dragged near to the window, and had sprung alert at the sound of her entry. She did not speak to him, not even when he addressed her; she only smiled and left with the brass octant in her hands.

 

That evening she brought him a meal of loblolly sweetened with raisins. When he expressed concern for his crew down in the hold, she told him not to fret. "Our hold is much nicer than that of the Dutchman," she told him. "Your men are more than comfortable there." Amusement opened her face. "Well. More comfortable than they could be."

Persuaded, he began to eat grudgingly, though he had to admit he was ravenous after a day and a half without a meal. She watched him in silence, but as he was finishing his meal, she began to speak with him about his life, asking him about his advancements in the navy, how he had occupied himself the past years other than obliterating the threat of piracy from the seas. He didn’t have much to tell her; he had spent more of his life at sea than on land now.

Something akin to envy flashed in her eyes at this declaration, but she simply prodded him with more questions.

He dared to ask a few of his own as well. Since the escape from Jones’ ship, he had heard news of her only from the pirates he had captured. He knew she had married Turner in a sham ceremony; had heard rumors that Turner had ended up as captain of the Dutchman, and that some pagan goddess had dealt Beckett and his fleet a massive blow in the end. When asked, Elizabeth filled him in on the finer points of how she had led the pirates to victory, and when he prompted her to clarify and discovered that they had made her their king, he began to laugh.

"My apologies," he gasped at last. To be truthful, he couldn’t exactly place what amused him so much about her revelation, and when he saw that his continued laughter piqued her, he made an effort to calm himself.

"You know," she said, her mouth twisting as she watched him struggle for breath, "I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh so hard in my life."

He conceded with a nod of his head. He had abandoned his hat hours ago and beneath his wig his head itched. "So – so you’re the pirate king now," he said.

"More or less," she replied. "To be honest, there’s not much for the king to do. He – she, rather – only presides when there are important matters of business to attend to. At the moment I’m just another pirate, albeit one with a certain amount of power at meetings."

"You don’t even receive a tax from your subjects?"

"One would think a man so versed in the extermination of pirates would better know our habits," she said, eyes scornful. "We hold no quarter with taxes. We’re hard-working men, Admiral, roughly speaking. Our motto has always been no prey, no pay, and the king is not excepted from this. Otherwise, what’s stopping me from demanding swag from my Brethren and crippling them with my greed?"

"It’s not unheard of, I’m sure," said the admiral quietly. Her eyes burned at him.

"I would not allow it," she said and then stood abruptly. "Some wine?"

He assented with a nod and she went to the sideboard to fetch two glasses and a bottle. She brought it to him, poured him a glass, returned to her side of the table after setting his dish on the low cabinet at the window.

The wine flowed over his tongue like honey, rich and sweet and alight with summer’s warmth. Decadent, and obviously costly. Probably came from some rich merchant’s private stock; no vessel would have carried many bottles of such vintage.

"I never knew you were the captain of the Prodigal," he ventured once she had settled. "Tales have reached us, of course…."

He trailed off, confused at her laughter. "Oh James. You must know that the Prodigal wasn’t always mine; in fact, it didn’t come under my captainship until just a year ago. I seized it from Captain Vane."

"The Gulper of Glasses," said the admiral, and she nodded, satisfied.

"You knew of him."

"Too well. His fate?" He wanted to know, didn’t want to know, couldn’t help but asking.

"Overboard with the rest, may the seas keep them." A pause. "You look shocked."

He was frowning at her. "What happened to your talk about Brethren? You would not tax them, but you would stoop to murder and thievery?"

"Piracy," she said irritably. "Captain Vane was not one of the Brethren."

"That’s your excuse?"

She sneered at him. "Everyone must eat, Admiral, you know this as well as I. Besides, the seas are better off without the likes of him fouling their waters. You know why he was called ‘gulper of glasses’?"

He didn’t want to hear.

"His captives were ordered to drink a whole pitcher of alcohol or be executed. Perhaps not the most inventive pirate to have ever pillaged and plundered, but dedicated."

He looked away, studying their reflections in the black window-glass. Her fingers played over the rim of her glass, her other hand supported her head, and she looked utterly at home in the ornate wooden chair, booted ankle crossed over her knee. He had to shut his eyes. "You’ve changed so much, Elizabeth."

Across the table she laughed; the youthful, childish glee of it sent a spark down his spine. "Don’t be asinine, James," she told him. "The only thing I’ve changed is my clothing."

He looked up at her, face white. "You think because I’ve made some terrible mistakes that my judgment is completely erroneous," he said. "Certainly I’ve made some bad choices and I have been a very bad judge of character. But you forget, Elizabeth, that I’ve known you since you were a girl. The girl I knew then was very different from the one sitting before me now. The girl I knew had a compassionate heart, still knew what kindness felt like. Now you sit there and all I see is a criminal."

At her stillness and silence, he first wondered if he had said too much. Her eyes, glinting in the candlelight, offered no answer. He fidgeted briefly, toyed with his wine glass, his skin rippling with goose-bumps beneath the layers of his coat and his shirt.

Finally she responded. "Despite all that," she said, with one phrase seeming to wipe clean the slate he had just meticulously filled with accusations, "you still chase."  
He looked at her, blank, and her smile bared hungry teeth.

"You courted me then when I was a girl," she elucidated, "and now I am a woman you chase me. Perhaps you’re right; perhaps I did change. But you’re the same as ever. I can’t help but wonder at this single-mindedness of character."

"It holds less of a mystery for me," he said, bitterness plain in his face. "You tormented me then and you torment me now. In that, nothing has changed."

Her lips curled into a smirk. "Indeed," she said. "You were a fool for the damsel in distress then, too. You came running to my aid any time I raised my white flag." Across the table she regarded him from beneath an arched brow. Her face, once courtly-pale, now burned with golden fire from years of hard work beneath the Caribbean sun. Yet her features retained that lionlike dignity they had always held, even as a young girl on the crossing from England.

She spoke again, this time in the lowered tones of a conspirator, or a lover. "How the tables have turned, James."

Suddenly she stood and approached him on cat feet. He pushed his chair back and made to stand but she met him there, one hand on his chest, pressing him down again. The candlelight illuminated only the left side of her face, shadows throwing her features wildly out of proportion so that he could not discern her expression.

"I can see it in your eyes," she said, her fingers tracing the lines of brocade on his coat. His hands rested on the arms of his chair; he willed them not to clench. "You wish you’d broadsided, given us all you had, sent us to the bottom of the sea with your queen’s blessing."

She seized him by the front of his coat and shook him once, roughly. His astonishment made him pliable. "And now you play the part of the distressed damsel. How does my mercy feel, James? Do you crave to be rescued? Or would you consent to be that rope, spliced in with mine, to become something greater?"

Without warning he slapped her wandering hands from his shirtfront, seized her by the wrists, flung her back against the table. In one fluid movement he towered above her, his hands pressing her tight against the wood. He was aware of her legs and insinuated himself between so she could not kick him. The wineglass had tumbled to the floor, where it shattered brightly against the thin rug, and for a moment he was sorry to have wasted it.

Her eyes sparkled at him like the treacherous crystal shards on the rug. "How the tables have turned," she repeated, her voice barely a breath, and he resisted the urge to slam her against the tabletop as hard as he could.

"Ropes must first be unraveled to be spliced," he said instead, adjusting his grip on her wrists. He could feel the bones grinding together. She gasped, though he knew not in pain or pleasure. Certainly she smiled.

"Unravel me, then," she whispered, and it took all his self-control not to.

He drew back, loosening his grip on her wrists, but before he could pull away she sat up on the table. Swiftly she reversed their situation: she wrenched her wrists from his grip and seized him about the waist with strong legs. He barely had time to sort out this new development before he felt the cold point of a dagger at his throat and saw the teeth in her lioness’s smile.

He faltered for an instant, but in a moment he wrested a pistol from her belt and had cocked it at her temple. Her smile, if anything, broadened, and he felt her shake with a silent laugh.

"Now I have the difficult task of deciding whether or not you would actually do it," she said, the timbre of her voice causing him some alarm. "Would you, James? Shoot me with my own pistol?"

"I don’t know," he said truthfully. "But I am quite certain you wouldn’t hesitate to slit my throat."

She stiffened and when she drew away from him he felt himself wobble in shock. "You really don’t know me at all anymore, do you," she said, turning her face away. Her voice dropped to little more than a distracted murmur. "Maybe you’re right. Maybe I have changed." She regarded him, her expression wretched. "You don’t know me at all."

He wasn’t sure what he intended, but as he leaned forward the pistol simply slipped from his hand. It bounced off the table with a loud thunk which went unnoticed by both parties. His now-empty hand went restlessly to her waist, then more boldly upward.

"Bloody bigwig," she said, breath coming in a hiss between her teeth as she none-too-gently yanked the wig off his head. His dark hair beneath was matted and sweat now prickled at his brow. The wig went sailing across the room, and soon enough her sword and gunbelt joined the other pistol on the floor.

 

3.

"Elizabeth."

She glanced up at him.

He wasn’t entirely sure how to phrase it. She lay beside him in his arms, not entirely undressed but glorious in her dishabille. Her hair tickled his chest and he thought that if this were as close to heaven as he would ever get, he could not complain.

"James?" That smile touched the corners of her sated mouth and he had to remind himself why she was saying his name.

His lips found her forehead. "Join me," he said. Her eyelashes flickered against his chin. "Sail for England. You would receive spoils and clemency, and you could sail honestly again –"

"Honestly?"

She pulled herself out of his grasp, sat up to look down at him, and the fire in her eyes was enough to suddenly silence him. He gazed up at her, through the mane of hair that obscured her glowing face.

"You want to know the real reason I executed Vane?" she said, voice steely. He did not respond.

"He betrayed us," she said simply. "He dealt a flaming trade of selling decent pirates to the navy, then scavenging for your leavings. There are two things a pirate never does: we never burn a ship before we’ve looted it, and we never sell our own kind to yours. He broke both rules."

She appeared to soften and went so far as to caress his cheek. He caught his breath, still unused to this generosity of hers, and his fingers found her hand to try the texture of her sun-browned skin. "I will not join you, James, and you had better not ask me again."

She kissed him then, and this time he simply reveled in it, letting her hands move over him as they would. Perhaps her heart was more compassionate than he had claimed, he thought as her hands, roughened by hard work, gave him more than he ever thought she would deign to give him. Her name tasted like her sweet wine in his mouth, and he fancied she smiled when he abbreviated it to Lizzie, oh Liz.

 

~&~

Ironically, the Prodigal loosed its captives on the same island on which the captain had left the admiral five years before. This time, however, the two commanding officers bound themselves to an oath to meet there a year hence.

The admiral knew he would stoop even to deception to keep this appointment. He still wasn’t sure if he could count on Elizabeth, but he found the doubt excited him, gave him an odd kind of hope, something to pray for. He hadn’t prayed in a long time and wondered if God heard prayers for pirates.

Later he would tell Master Stott that he had no idea why the Prodigal’s captain had released him and his men. Stott would superciliously say that the admiral was a very lucky man but shouldn’t rely on his luck to last. The admiral would laugh at that and tell him he thought his luck was only beginning.

Stott would wonder for weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: there actually was a pirate called "Gulper of Glasses," but he was German and lived in the 1400s.


End file.
